While the majority of the postelection focus has been on the future of the Republican Party, the Democrats have an equally important task ahead of them in defining what the party stands for in regard to the federal government. The Democrats have put themselves squarely on the side of an activist federal government, a government that provides a floor beneath which no citizens can or should fall, through broad programs like Medicaid, welfare spending, federal education requirements and on and on.

The Republicans long ago built a philosophy that is suspicious of the reach of the federal government  perhaps best embodied by the oft-quoted Reagan quip, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

While Democrats see this Republican criticism of government as a criticism of the desire to help one another and defend the common good, that is far from the truth.

In 2012 Democrats cast the Republicans as the party of "You're on your own," but the truth is that the long battle to build a social safety net has created a vast bureaucracy that can and often does systematically crush the individual under its weight.

Nowhere is this more apparent right now than in the Federal Emergency Management Agency response to Hurricane Sandy  and its response to the dozens of disasters across our country in the last 10 years. Over that stretch of time, FEMA has offered more than $80 billion in assistance to state and local governments and private citizens in their time of most dire need. This aid is welcome, if not absolutely essential. But it comes with a price, and with strings attached.

Vermonters, and tens of thousands of people up and down the coast of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, welcomed the federal employees and contractors who arrived to help after the disasters of flooding and destruction caused by Sandy and Irene. On an individual level, these were friendly, helpful people, often with their own stories of survival and perseverance, and with an earnest desire to lend a hand.

But as Vermonters learned (if they didn't already know), and the East Coast residents affected by Sandy are learning, all too often the weight of federal and state bureaucracy overwhelms the resources and ingenuity of the individual. Small towns of 800, while welcoming the money and reimbursement that would help them recover from a disaster that overwhelmed their local resources, struggled under the workload of thousands of pieces of paper, voluminous reports, requirements, regulations and sometimes idiotic rules and delay.

One of the more stark examples of arcane regulations trumping good sense was the fact that FEMA would reimburse towns only for a replacement culvert that was the same size as the one washed away  and not for a larger diameter channel that could prevent the same damage from recurring.

It's just a culvert. Make it bigger, and it won't flood so easily.

Far beyond the scope of Vermont, the federal government has subsidized hundreds of millions of dollars in reconstruction in coastal areas that are repeatedly flooded  all with no eye to building differently to prevent the same disaster in the future.

To Republicans, the answer to this inefficiency is simple: privatization and decentralization. The Democrats have yet to craft a viable counter.

The Day of New London (Conn.), Nov. 23, 2012

We supposedly are a nation of gracious losers.

After every hard-fought contest  even pro hockey games in which hulking skaters have spent the previous couple of hours slamming opponents into the boards and trying to knock their teeth out  second-place finishers typically shake hands and congratulate the victors.

Evidently, though, Mitt Romney and his vanquished GOP minions  Fox News commentators, talk radio troglodytes and other disenfranchised banner-wavers for the far right  subscribe to the sour grapes school of politics. They continue to talk trash about President Obama as if the election were tomorrow instead of more than two weeks ago, and just can't choke down the fact that the majority of voters don't agree with them.

It's like the scene in the 1941 classic "Citizen Kane," when fictional gubernatorial candidate Charles Foster Kane, as played by Orson Welles, holds up a prematurely printed newspaper with the headline he hoped would run, "Kane Elected," and then selects the alternative version, "Fraud at Polls."

A photograph supposedly snapped of Romney the other day pumping gas for his SUV at a Shell station in La Jolla, Calif., shows him in uncharacteristically rumpled attire and with an expression suggesting he has been infected by an acute case of postelection stress disorder.

The authenticity of the picture, now circulating widely on the Internet, hasn't been verified. In fact, aside from a brief concession speech in the early morning hours of Nov. 7 we've seen or heard little from the former Massachusetts governor.

Romney's only other comments after the election, made via a telephone conference call to wealthy campaign donors that was later leaked to the media, blamed his loss on "gifts" President Obama gave to African-Americans, Hispanics, women and young voters.

He was quoted as saying, "With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift. Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents' plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008."

Meanwhile, distraught voters in a number of red states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, are circulating petitions calling for secession from the union.

Even though the United States just re-elected its first African-American president, it's as if we're getting ready to fight the Civil War again.

This nation already faces far too many immediate challenges  solving the debt crisis to avoid plunging off the fiscal cliff; trying to broker a cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians; the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq  to remain so sharply divided.

It's time for Romney and his followers to show some leadership and some class.

Extend a hand, if not in friendship, at least in acknowledgement that we are all Americans, and we can either stand as one or all fall together.